There was much panic amongst site owners and marketers in the run up to the enforcement deadline last year, mainly because people were not told clearly what was necessary for compliance.

Should they add interruptive pop-ups for new visitors and risk massive bounce rates? Or instead go for an ‘implied consent’ solution? Or do nothing? In theory the latter two options carried the risk of fines, so the worry was understandable.

We opted for an implied consent solution as we believed that our users were savvy enough to know what cookies are, but also deserved some clarity on what we do with their data. 

There were also dark predictions that the EU Cookie Law would cost UK Plc up to £10bn, but thankfully this hasn’t come to pass. 

Indeed, up to the end of 2012, the ICO received just 550 complaints about cookies on websites, and they are much more concerned about spam emails and unwanted calls. 

Concerns reported about cookies via the ICO website:

Since then, only a further 87 complaints have reached the ICO, compared to 78,667 about unwanted marketing communications. 

So, a huge waste of everyone’s time and money?